On This Page

Brightcove Player Sample: Are You Still Watching?

In this topic, you will learn how to create a Brightcove player that detects when the viewer has stopped watching, while leaving the video playing.

Player example

In this sample you will see after a set amount of time, an overlay message is displayed. If the viewer clicks the message within a specified time, then playback continues. If not, the video is paused. This technique is useful if you have long-form content. This will keep you from wasting bandwidth on viewers who start playing a video and then leave to do something else without bothering to stop it.

Some information is displayed below the player for informational purposes only.

iframe or In-Page embed

When developing enhancements for the Brightcove player you will need to decide if the code is a best fit for the iframe or In-Page embed implementation. The best practice recommendation is to build a plugin for use with an iframe implementation. The advantages of using the iframe player are:

No collisions with existing JavaScript and/or CSS

Automatically responsive

The iframe eases use in social media apps (or whenever the video will need to "travel" into other apps)

Although integrating the In-Page embed player can be more complex, there are times when you will plan your code around that implementation. To generalize, this approach is best when the containing page needs to communicate to the player. Specifically, here are some examples:

Code in the containing page needs to listen for and act on player events

The player uses styles from the containing page

The iframe will cause app logic to fail, like a redirect from the containing page

Even if your final implementation does not use the iframe code, you can still use the In-Page embed code with a plugin for your JavaScript and a separate file for your CSS. This encapsulates your logic so that you can easily use it in multiple players.

API/Plugin resources used

Player/HTML configuration

This section details any special configuration needed during player creation. In addition, other HTML elements that must be added to the page, beyond the in-page embed player implementation code, are described.

Player configuration

No special configuration is required for the Brightcove Player you create for this sample.

Other HTML

The Overlay Plugin's CSS and JavaScript files are included for proper use of the plugin. Also, to help clarify what the sample's JavaScript code is doing added HTML is added to display key values. Of course, in actual usage you would not display this information.

Application flow

The basic logic behind this application is:

Configure the overlay, then hide it initially.

Track if 5 seconds (or the time you specify) has passed, and when it has, display the overlay.

When the overlay has been displayed for 5 seconds (or the time you specify), and the text has not been clicked, pause the video.

When the button is clicked, or the viewer starts the video after pause, reinitialize values and start time tracking again.

Configure the overlay

Find the code which is labeled:

// +++ Configure the overlay +++

Configuration of Brightcove's Overlay Plugin. Note this is where the text that appears after set time is entered.

Track times

Find the code which is labeled:

// ### When playback position changes, show the overlay msg if greater than time check point ###

The timeupdate event is monitored to track how long the video has been playing since the last time check, and how long the message has been displayed.

Display click to continue button and countdown to pause

Find the code which is labeled:

// ### Display overlay message and start countdown to pause ###

JavaScript's setInterval method is used to track how long the click to continue button has been displayed, and when time is met, video is paused.

Restart tracking

Find the code which is labeled:

// ### Reset counters after click or pause ###

When the click to continue button is clicked, or the video is resumed after a pause, the variables used for tracking times are reset.

Application styling

The CSS is vital to the functioning of this sample, and has styles to do the following:

Hides the overlay using the display: none style. This style is programmatically added and removed.

Formats the click to continue text that is used as a button.

Sizes the player.

Plugin code

Normally when converting the JavaScript into a Brightcove Player plugin nominal changes are needed. One required change is to replace the standard use of the ready() method with the code that defines a plugin.

Here is the very commonly used start to JavaScript code that will work with the player:

As mentioned earlier, you can see the plugin's JavaScript code in this document's corresponding GitHub repo: still-watching.js.

Using the plugin with a player

Once you have the plugin's CSS and JavaScript files stored in an Internet accessible location, you can use the plugin with a player. In Studio's PLAYERS module you can choose a player, then in the PLUGINS section add the URLs to the CSS and JavaScript files, and also add the Name and Options, if options are needed.